Our Cute Little House

After lots of going back and forth, we put our house on the market today.  We thought we could stay here for awhile and raise our baby here, but found a bigger house in a neighborhood near our friends and family that we couldn't pass up!  I LOVE this house and fell in love with it as soon as I saw it - our next house isn't near as cute :).  It was great when I worked downtown, and even after I got my job in Republic it isn't that far of a commute.  I love the hardwood floors, thick trim, exposed brick, fireplace, and all the character in this little bungalow.  I hope someone else loves it just as much as I do!

Our little yellow house!  We just put a new deck on last week... it needed one pretty bad.  We took our family picture on those steps in February with Oliver.  And this next February we'll have another little one in our family picture!

 I love our living room, it's probably my most favorite room in the house.  The natural lighting is awesome and the yellow is so cheery!  I get the most compliments on my wall decoration- it's just wall dots from Home Depot behind painted embroidery hoops.  I hot glued them to the wall since the walls are plaster and I didn't want to mess with nails.  The whole thing probably cost $10!  My lamp is from a thrift store, the shade is from Target.  The rug is from Ikea, $20.  The recliner is the most comfortable chair in the world and Tyler's favorite place to watch TV when one of us isn't lying on the couch!

The cedar chest is from my Meemaw, she has bought a cedar chest for every grandchild and we got ours at the farmer's market from an Amish man.  The light is from Ikea and the painting is done by Phyllis Spradling who lives in Springfield... I love it!  That fireplace is awesome in winter, it's so cute but really heats up the house.  I didn't take pictures of our bedroom because it's kind of messy, but that's it off to the right.  

Lots of good conversation has happened around this table.  We don't use it very often because most of the time we eat our dinner on the coffee table in the living room.  But when we have people over we all eat here.  I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner on 11-11-11 and had 6 people over for a full course meal all made from scratch.  I even cooked a turkey!  It was exhausting.  I don't think I'll ever do it again all on my own, ha.  I also had 7 girls over for a green themed St. Patrick's party with green EVERYthing which was so fun!  I love hosting people and making all the food.  When Tyler's grandma was in the hospital and very, very sick she said the one thing she wished she would have eaten was lobster.  Grandma got better and we had a seafood boil at our house, with lobster for her!  We spread newspaper all over the table and dumped crab legs, potatoes, corn, and sausage in the middle.  It was delicious! 

The exposed brick in the kitchen is really cool, and the countertops double as a cutting board.  I never had a gas range before this house and I'm in love!  Our new house has an electric stove and it'll be hard to adjust.  The curtain was made by yours truly and I'm not great at sewing so they're definitely crooked.  I just adjust the curtain rod and everything's ok :). 

This room is off of the kitchen where I've made said curtains, and notice the blank canvas?  I once heard someone say that 'The best piece of art I ever made was the one still in my head.'  That is how I feel!  I have all these ideas of what to do with that canvas but don't know which to choose from.  I'm also so critical of my work that it seems to always look better in my head... my high school art teacher would kill me for saying all that!  The sewing machine table is from Genoa Central High School - my Meemaw got it from their home ec room, and it's made our way around the family and into my house.  This machine was in their old high school, where my dad went, before it was demolished to build a bigger school (for the buzzing metropolis of Genoa, Arkansas).




I'm slightly obsessed with bare trees.  And there's a peek at our bedroom!

 

Even though our grass needs mowed, bushes need trimmed, and our garden is out of control... I love this backyard.  I especially love when we put the cushions on the patio furniture and light the chiminea.  Some of my most relaxing nights have involved a wonderfully cooked meal, a bottle of wine, and relaxing with Tyler on our patio sitting around the fire.  It's perfect in the fall.  Our new house has a massive back deck so we can still enjoy doing that!  I love that this house is in the middle of Springfield but yet it's so quiet here, and the privacy fence allows me to feel like no one else is around.

This isn't our first house, technically.  We bought a duplex right about 6 months after we got married and remodeled both sides.  We didn't look on the market for a duplex to remodel; it fell into our laps and we took the opportunity.  After 3 years of being married, we moved out of the duplex and into this house.  I consider this house our "first", since we actually looked for a house on the market and found it (actually, Tyler found it first through Facebook!) and it's been a great first house.  We kept our duplex and currently rent our both sides through our property manager, and we will either sell or rent this house too.  If we rent it, our property manager will just take over and manage everything.  I hope the people love and take care of it, it's a great place to live!